Pages

Macaroon Heaven + The Mont Saint Michel

Coming to France, I knew the food would be delectable, but I didn't exactly know just how good. (As I type this, I am recovering from a chocolate lava cake coma. Eat. Sleep. Repeat). Through my school, a decent amount of students were given the opportunity to take 3 cooking classes in groups of 4, all with a plump little old lady. She is a full on French baker/chef extraordinaire, and is incredibly helpful with correcting our grammar and pronunciation mistakes. When she initially spoke about this possibility at a school meeting, my friends and I practically pounced on the sign up sheet. Because we have half-days on Wednesdays, we have been heading to her house a few hours after school and filling up on everything she has us make. Last week, we made an insane apple tart which you can see here, and this week was the ever so delicious and French macaroon. I would 100% attach the recipe, however it is in French and making conversions/translating to English is not really my thing. Although, I would recommend this recipe from the wonderful Martha Stewart- while requiring a ton of patience, macaroons really aren't as hard as they seem!

The process began by beating together egg whites and a collection of different types of flours. We had to make sure everything was extremely well mixed in order to avoid messing up the texture/shape of the macaroons. After mixing until the mix was reminiscent of homemade whipped cream, she added in some violet food coloring, but she made sure not to put a lot in for taste. The following step was probably the hardest- we were to take mini spoons, grab a mini-ball of the paste, and put a perfect amount onto the tray. It was especially difficult because even the slightest bit extra would make the macaroon giant once cooked. Thankfully, my friend Marisa and I had the tray with the shapes as guidelines. Yay!

After letting the macaroon tops cool for a long long time, we were allowed to fill them up! The lady had already make some mint colored ones, which made filling them easy, however the purple tops we made were very delicate + touchy straight out of the oven. I definitely broke a few- which meant I could eat them right then and there, so I'm not complaining. Normally when I think of macaroons, I think of the filling as being sort of like jelly, however we were given all different types of ganache- vanilla, hazelnut, dark chocolate, caramel, etc. As you can see from the picture, I mostly filled mine with dark chocolate and hazelnut. So so yummy!

On Thursday, I was pretty burnout in general from school and, yet again, cooking class saved the day. Our cooking teacher came to school (she used to teach pronunciation!) and brought each of us mini chocolate balls with the leftover ganache inside them! Those chocolate balls were a definite pick me up.

Hopefully these pictures don't make you too hungry! Also, I feel terrible about not posting more outfits around town, but it's really hard to meet up with people to specifically do outfit pictures. It's really busy + touristy in town when I actually am with my friends and it's hard to find time to shoot outfits otherwise. I am hoping to get around to shooting some soon! Sorry guys. xoxo Isabelle

P.S. Today marks one month in France! WOOO! To commemorate our one month anniversary if you will, we took a school trip this weekend to the Mont Saint Michel, which is where the following pictures were taken. This trip was only crossing the water which leads you to the actual structure, and it was quite the experience.It started out very strange as we trekked through mud and quick sand up to our calves, yet it was a fun experience to have with my friends and their host siblings. Just as we were coming out of the first mini water basin, it began to hail and it progressed to what I imagine a hurricane to be like. It was freezing and we were all donning our finest athletic shorts- the perfect combination. A few students' host siblings were younger as well as our English teacher's children, and they were definitely chilled to the bone. I'm honestly just glad that everyone made it out okay- it was that crazy. That was definitely a class trip I'll never forget!